"Unpretending" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Grant, "You are now Washington's legitimate successor, and occupy a position of almost dangerous elevation; but if you continue, as heretofore, to be yourself,— simple, honest, and unpretending,—you will enjoy through life the respect and love of friends, and the homage of millions of ...
— The True Citizen, How To Become One • W. F. Markwick, D. D. and W. A. Smith, A. B.
... the cratur, from which, he observed with a wink, the revenue had not in any way benefited, while a bowl of smoking hot potatoes formed the chief dish of the feast. I remember doing good justice to it, and was not sorry when my uncle proposed that we should retire to our downy couches. Unpretending as was the outside of the inn, they were far superior to what I should have expected; mine was a feather bed to which many hundreds of geese must have contributed, while the curtains were of silk, ...
— Paddy Finn • W. H. G. Kingston
... escape. In our day, M. Rufin Piotrowski, also a Polish patriot, has had the marvelous good-fortune to succeed in the all but impossible attempt; and he has given his story to his countrymen in a simple, unpretending narrative, which, even in an abridged form, will, we think, be found one ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 87, March, 1875 • Various
... admonition: He, elated, Vindicated Clergyman's position. People round him Always found him Plain and unpretending; Kindly teaching, Plainly preaching, All ...
— Fifty Bab Ballads • William S. Gilbert
... imposition. Whenever a distinguished stranger visited the town, he was not let off without the question, "Are you aware, sir, that we have among us one of the heroes of the late Mexican war?" And then a stroll about town to the various points of historic interest invariably ended at the unpretending ...
— The Queen of Sheba & My Cousin the Colonel • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... pretensions of men! There was his son lying all but dead, and the man was still unconvinced of the folly he had been guilty of. I could hardly bear the sight of his composure. I shall hate the name of Science till the day I die. Give me nothing but commonplace unpretending people! ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... with unbounded kindness from men of science of all countries, and most profound was her gratitude to them. Modest and unpretending to excess, nothing could be more generous than the unfeigned delight she shewed in recognising the genius and discoveries of others; ever jealous of their fame, and never ...
— Personal Recollections, from Early Life to Old Age, of Mary Somerville • Mary Somerville
... amid tempests without, and threats of mutiny within, were those of the great chief-justice, whom posterity will reverence as one of the founders of the nation. Marshall's "Life of Washington" is a faithful and conscientious narrative, written in a clear, unpretending style, and possesses ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta
... to say the simplest thing in the least simple manner. Not Osric nor Iachimo detests the mot propre more than Sidney. Yet again, he is one of the arch offenders in the matter of spoiling the syntax of the sentence and the paragraph. As has been observed already, the unpretending writers noticed above, if they have little harmony or balance of phrase, are seldom confused or breathless. Sidney was one of the first writers of great popularity and influence (for the Arcadia was very widely read) to introduce ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury
... stone's throw of it the moors begin, lying widely under the expanse of the sky, with the perpetual running of waters, and the lonely farms, from which the smoke curls up, blue against the brown hillside. There are the sombre and unpretending small villages, Parracombe, Brendon, Bratton-Fleming, each with its history and its little church, and the homesteads from which the young men have gone, in their humble twos and threes, to take their part in this war ...
— Lynton and Lynmouth - A Pageant of Cliff & Moorland • John Presland
... all the garniture and form of Life; and work, and speak, and even think and feel, as our Fathers, and primeval grandfathers, from the beginning, have given it us?—Who printed thee, for example, this unpretending Volume on the Philosophy of Clothes? Not the Herren Stillschweigen and Company; but Cadmus of Thebes, Faust of Mentz, and innumerable others whom thou knowest not. Had there been no Moesogothic Ulfila, there had been no English Shakspeare, or a different ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle
... machinery directed by the Vicar. It may be new to some readers, especially to Americans, to learn how much of the time and thoughts of our Anglican beneficed clergymen are wanted for things not directly religious. The church, a plain and unpretending edifice, built in the year 1838, is served by the Vicar and two curates. There are daily services, and on Sundays an early celebration. The average attendance at the Sunday morning mid-day service is about one hundred; in the evening ...
— As We Are and As We May Be • Sir Walter Besant
... continued in the service of the Czar, and the success which attended all his plans and proposals gave him, in the end, great influence, and was the means of acquiring for him great credit and renown. And yet he was so discreet and unpretending in his manners and demeanor, if the accounts which have come down to us respecting him are correct, that the high favor in which he was held by the emperor did not awaken in the hearts of the native nobles of the land any considerable degree of that ...
— Peter the Great • Jacob Abbott
... native London, "the centre of busy interests," he had great liking for unpretending men, who would come and gossip with him in a friendly, companionable way, or who liked to talk about old authors or old books. In his love of books he was very catholic. "Shaftesbury is not too genteel, nor Jonathan Wild too low. But for books which are no books," such as "scientific ...
— Charles Lamb • Barry Cornwall
... a great simplicity of manners. The dress of the upper classes was wonderfully plain and unpretending, presenting little variety and scarcely any ornament. The grandee wore, indeed, an elaborate wig, it being imperative on all men to shave the head for the sake of cleanliness. But otherwise, his costume was of the simplest and the scantiest. Ordinarily, when he was employed in ...
— Ancient Egypt • George Rawlinson
... his early companions in arms were his occasional guests, and his friendships and connections linked him with some of the most prominent and worthy people of the country, who were sure to be received with cordial, but simple and unpretending hospitality. His marriage was unblessed with children; but those of Mrs. Washington experienced from him parental care and affection, and the formation of their minds and manners was one of the dearest objects of his attention. His domestic concerns and social enjoyments, however, were not permitted ...
— The Life of George Washington, Volume I • Washington Irving
... 5: "I was pleased by a little unpretending modern German picture at Dusseldorf, by Bosch, representing a boy carving a model of his sheep dog in wood."—J. ...
— The Gentle Art of Making Enemies • James McNeill Whistler
... and in Mrs. Glegg's day there was no incongruous new-fashioned smartness, no plate-glass in shop-windows, no fresh stucco-facing or other fallacious attempt to make fine old red St. Ogg's wear the air of a town that sprang up yesterday. The shop-windows were small and unpretending; for the farmers' wives and daughters who came to do their shopping on market-days were not to be withdrawn from their regular well-known shops; and the tradesmen had no wares intended for customers who would go on their way and be seen no more. Ah! even Mrs. Glegg's day seems ...
— The Mill on the Floss • George Eliot
... He knew not what he feared. The fraud of the intention, the groundless claim to knowledge, made Nehemiah's scheme seem multifariously guilty in some sort; while Tyler Sudley and his wife, albeit no wiser mathematically, had all the sanctions of probity in their calm, unpretending ignorance. ...
— The Moonshiners At Hoho-Hebee Falls - 1895 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... and so to speak chronic sense of God's presence the following sample from Professor Starbuck's manuscript collection may serve to give an idea. It is from a man aged forty-nine—probably thousands of unpretending Christians would ...
— The Varieties of Religious Experience • William James
... disciples of Whitfield, and the self-devoted piety of the young missionary was already so well known to Mr. Edwards by report, that it was most gladly that he received him into his house and family. There the impression Brainerd made was of a singularly social, entertaining person, meek and unpretending, but manly and independent. Probably rest and brightness had come when the terrible struggle of his early years had ceased, and morbid despondency had given way to Christian hope, for he became at once a bright and pleasant member of ...
— Pioneers and Founders - or, Recent Workers in the Mission field • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... dramatist can alone account. Toby Matthew wrote to Bacon (as Viscount St. Albans) at an uncertain date after January 1621: 'The most prodigious wit that ever I knew of my nation and of this side of the sea is of your Lordship's name, though he be known by another.' {371} This unpretending sentence is distorted into conclusive evidence that Bacon wrote works of commanding excellence under another's name, and among them probably Shakespeare's plays. According to the only sane interpretation of Matthew's words, his ...
— A Life of William Shakespeare - with portraits and facsimiles • Sidney Lee
... represented as true by my fair and obliging correspondent; and they led me to consider the possibility of rendering a fictitious personage interesting by mere dignity of mind and rectitude of principle, assisted by unpretending good sense and temper, without any of the beauty, grace, talent, accomplishment, and wit, to which a heroine of romance is supposed to have a prescriptive right. If the portrait was received with interest ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, - Vol. 10, No. 283, 17 Nov 1827 • Various
... son. He was called Maxwell, after the physician who attended his father, but he died in infancy. The spot where the poet was laid was in a comer of St. Michael's churchyard, and the grave remained for a time unmarked by any monument. After some years his wife placed over it a plain, unpretending stone, inscribed with his name and age, and with the names of his two boys, who were buried in the same place. Well had it been, if he had been allowed to rest undisturbed in this grave where his family had laid him. But well-meaning, though ignorant, officiousness would not suffer it to be ...
— Robert Burns • Principal Shairp
... any head but his own. He retained the same simplicity of manners and appearance which had struck me so forcibly when I first saw him in the country: his dress was suited to his station; plain and unpretending, with sufficient attention to neatness: he always wore boots, and, when on more than usual ceremony, buckskin breeches. His manners were manly, simple, and independent; strongly expressive of conscious genius and worth, but without ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... RUTH enter through the double doors quickly at back. GEOFFREY is a young, good-looking man, but with a weak face. He is of course very smartly dressed. RUTH is a very serenely beautiful girl, rather noble in type, but unconscious and unpretending in manner. They close ...
— The Girl with the Green Eyes - A Play in Four Acts • Clyde Fitch
... trees of the orchard to those of the forest, even for ornament. Fruit trees are indeed beautiful objects when gay with the blossoms of spring, or rich with the offerings of summer, and, mingled with others, are always desirable about a dwelling as simple and unpretending in its character as Wyllys-Roof. Beneath the windows were roses and other flowering shrubs; and these, with a few scattered natives of the soil—elm, hickory, sycamore, and tulip trees—farther from the house, were the only attempts at embellishment ...
— Elinor Wyllys - Vol. I • Susan Fenimore Cooper
... indeed, seems to be a characteristic of several other nations—an inordinate desire to become denationalized by imitating whatever is meretricious and absurd in other people; and you need not be surprised should you fail to recognize even your unpretending friend and correspondent on his return to California; for although I still pretend to write a little English, I no longer speak it except in broken accents. Having also worn out three good hats ...
— The Land of Thor • J. Ross Browne
... have had real satisfaction in looking over the book. There are some opinions with which I do not agree; but the main thing about the book is a good thing; namely its hearty, wholesome love of English literature, and the honest, unpretending, but genial and conversational, manner in which that love is uttered. It is a charming book to read, and it will breed in its readers the appetite to read English ...
— Letters to a Daughter and A Little Sermon to School Girls • Helen Ekin Starrett
... Hittaway knew this thoroughly, having much experience, and did make her fight bravely. For Mr. Hittaway's income was no more than modest. A few thousand pounds he had of his own when he married, and his Clara had brought to him the unpretending sum of fifteen hundred. But, beyond that, the poor official salary,—which was less than what a decent grocer would make,—was their all. The house in Warwick Square they had prudently purchased on their marriage,—when houses in Warwick Square ...
— The Eustace Diamonds • Anthony Trollope
... her devotees were Norris, the singer, and Mr. Watts, a rich gentleman-commoner, who had also met her at Oxford. Surely with such and other rivals, the chances of the quiet, unpretending, undemonstrative boy of nineteen were small. But no, Miss Linley was foolish enough to be captivated by genius, and charmed by such poems as the quiet boy wrote to her, of which this is, perhaps, ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 2 • Grace & Philip Wharton
... far rather hear an unpretending street organ than such abominations; and, indeed, some of the itinerant music is, to our unsophisticated ears, sweet beyond expression, especially when accompanied, as it is sometimes, by a rich Italian or reedy German voice; ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 54, No. 338, December 1843 • Various
... The short and unpretending critique which I add from "Bell's Weekly Messenger" was written, I believe, either by or at the instance of Mr. Bellamy, a gentleman who acted as secretary to the National Club. His son addressed me as editor of "The Germ," in terms of great ...
— The Germ - Thoughts towards Nature in Poetry, Literature and Art • Various
... bad language, and of tyranny or cruelty in any form. He entertained a love for the horse in the stable without bowing down to worship the stage-coachmen, the jockeys, and other ignoble heroes of "horsey" life. He loved his country and "the quiet, unpretending Church of England." He was ready to exalt the obsolescent fisticuffs and the "strong ale of Old England," but he was not blind either to the drunkenness or to the overbearing brutality which he had reason to fear might be held to disfigure the character ...
— Isopel Berners - The History of certain doings in a Staffordshire Dingle, July, 1825 • George Borrow
... wish I could keep you always. You would be happier here, in this little unpretending home of mine, than presiding as mistress over that great palatial house on the ...
— Macaria • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... themselves; and many a mother, who, with all her threatenings and scoldings, and even punishments, can not make herself obeyed, is surprised at the absolute ascendency which some inmate residing in the family acquires over them by means so silent, gentle, and unpretending, that they seem mysterious and almost magical. "What is the secret of it?" asks the mother sometimes in such a case. "You never punish the children, and you never scold them, and yet they obey you a great deal more readily and certainly than they ...
— Gentle Measures in the Management and Training of the Young • Jacob Abbott
... natives, that his little chapel could not contain the numbers who resorted to his ministrations: to Father Marest, the first preacher against intemperance; and, finally, to Marquette, the best and bravest of them all, the most single-hearted and unpretending! ...
— Western Characters - or Types of Border Life in the Western States • J. L. McConnel
... Francis, who had just reached his fifth year. My friends often came to visit me. In all that surrounded me, there was nothing either rare or beautiful. It was nature with her simplest ornaments, and family life in the most unpretending tranquillity. But nothing was wanting. I had space, verdure, affection, conversation, liberty, and employment,—the necessity of occupation, that spur and bridle which human indolence and mutability ...
— Memoirs To Illustrate The History Of My Time - Volume 1 • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... the most unpretending of human beings. She moved about the house with a step as stilly as the falling dews. Indeed, such was her walk through life. She seemed born to teach mankind unostentatious charity. Yet, under this mild, calm ...
— Ernest Linwood - or, The Inner Life of the Author • Caroline Lee Hentz
... unpretending youth to one of Bulwer's heroes, or Disraeli's, or even Thackeray's! And his simple old duke of a father and his dowdy old duchess of a mother are almost as devoid of swagger as himself; they seem to apologise for their very existence, if we may trust ...
— Social Pictorial Satire • George du Maurier
... and by. Acquaintance with the past history of native Art—its struggles, trials, troubles, and successes—will surely prove of worth in considering its present and future position and prospects. As some slight aid to the diffusion of information on the subject, these otherwise unpretending pages are respectfully submitted to ...
— Art in England - Notes and Studies • Dutton Cook
... and dislikes of Harold Bell Wright are quite pronounced. He is unpretending, cares not for the lime-light and avoids interviews for the public press. Loud, boisterous conversation is but little less offensive to him than vulgarity in speech or action. His friends are strong, clean-minded men who are doing things ...
— The Re-Creation of Brian Kent • Harold Bell Wright
... withered tree, And none look grave but dotards. He may live To thank me for this service. Rainbow arches, Highways of dreaming passion, have too long, Young as he is, diverted wish and hope From the unpretending ground we mortals tread;— Then shatter the delusion, break it up And set him free. What follows? I have learned That things will work to ends the slaves o' the world Do never dream of. I have been what he— This Boy—when he comes forth with bloody hands— Might ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth - Volume 1 of 8 • Edited by William Knight
... and sincere symbol of Hillsboro's past and present. The honest, unpretending people had bought the books they wished to read, and everyone's taste was represented, even a few French legends and pious tales being present as a concession to the Roman Catholic element among the French Canadians. There was a great deal ...
— Hillsboro People • Dorothy Canfield
... to Abergele we saw Hemmel Park, the seat of Lord Dinorbin, lately burnt down. Near Rhydland is Penwarn, the seat of Lord Mostyn; the house is small and unpretending, the grounds are beautiful. There is a very handsome dog-kennel, in which are kept forty-four couple of fine fox-hounds ready for work, besides old ones in one kennel, and young ones in another: the dogs all in such good order ...
— Philip Gilbert Hamerton • Philip Gilbert Hamerton et al
... a great blessing to be born surrounded by a natural horizon. The Old Gambrel-roofed House could not boast an unbroken ring of natural objects encircling it. Northerly it looked upon its own outbuildings and some unpretending two-story houses which had been its neighbors for a century and more. To the south of it the square brick dormitories and the bellfried hall of the university helped to shut out the distant view. But the west windows gave a broad outlook ...
— A Mortal Antipathy • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... moderns, infidels or Christians, praetorians or janissaries, the mousquetaires and Scottish archers of the French Louises, or the lifeguards of "bonnie Dundee's" own regiment, they have always claimed, and usually enjoyed, a greater degree of license than is accorded to the more unpretending soldiery of the line. The first in the field, and the last out of it, they have sometimes seemed to think that, by thrashing the king's enemies, they acquired a right to baton his subjects, that captured cities atoned for the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 57, No. 351, January 1845 • Various
... her liberal charity, and the mildness and sweetness of her disposition, made her friends of all who knew her. Many a saint, of the present day, holds his character for sanctity by as slight a tenure, as Anastasio did his as an orthodox Catholic; and many a modest, unpretending female, has been, like Madame de Luna, regarded as an infidel, and a vessel of wrath, for not sounding a trumpet before her, in the ...
— An Old Sailor's Yarns • Nathaniel Ames
... was scrupulously neat in his dress, and usually wore a dark brown frock coat and a black vest, while his neck was covered with a black satin scarf, which was arranged in graceful folds across his breast. Despite his unpretending manner and his plain attire, there was something about his appearance which never failed to attract attention. His voice was low and musical, and when conversing on any subject in which he was deeply interested he spoke with ...
— Perley's Reminiscences, Vol. 1-2 - of Sixty Years in the National Metropolis • Benjamin Perley Poore
... merit of the restoration, and representing the lord-general as a mere puppet in the hands of their hero. In proof they refer to the story told by Locke (iii. 471),—a story which cannot easily be reconciled with the more credible and unpretending narrative of Clarges, in Baker's Chronicle, p. 602, edit. 1730. But that the reader may form his own judgment, I shall subjoin the chief heads of each in ...
— The History of England from the First Invasion by the Romans - to the Accession of King George the Fifth - Volume 8 • John Lingard and Hilaire Belloc
... himself all at once. The first cottages were very plain structures, which he cunningly spoke of as "shanties," or "log huts," in which he simply lodged, and went to the hotels or neighboring farm-houses for his food in the simple and unpretending character of a haul-mealer. For a good while, therefore, he excited neither suspicion nor alarm, and the hotel-keepers welcomed him heartily, and all went on smoothly. Gradually, however, he threw off all disguise, bought land at high prices, and began unblushingly to erect "marine ...
— Reflections and Comments 1865-1895 • Edwin Lawrence Godkin
... a cause, when Pompey and Caesar and Cicero refused to stand up, upon which account particularly he got the love of the people, who looked upon him as a diligent and careful man, ready to help and succor his fellow-citizens. Besides, the people were pleased with his courteous and unpretending salutations and greetings; for he never met any citizen however humble and low, but he returned him his salute by name. He was looked upon as a man well-read in history, and pretty well versed in Aristotle's philosophy, in which one Alexander instructed him, a man ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... holiday, appointed a deputy, or slept out of the borough. His official dignity sat heavily upon him, his temper of late years often led him into conflict with jurors and medical witnesses, but he was well respected by all who knew the quiet unpretending benevolence of his character, never better exhibited than at the time of the cholera panic in 1832. The doctor had established a Fever Hospital in Bath Row, and here he received and treated, by himself, the only cases of Asiatic cholera ...
— Showell's Dictionary of Birmingham - A History And Guide Arranged Alphabetically • Thomas T. Harman and Walter Showell
... arise from so melancholy a topic. I say pleasure—because your brief and simple picture of the life and demeanour of the excellent person whom I trust you will again meet, cannot be contemplated without the admiration due to her virtues, and her pure and unpretending piety. Her last moments were particularly striking; and I do not know that, in the course of reading the story of mankind, and still less in my observations upon the existing portion, I ever met with any ...
— Life of Lord Byron, With His Letters And Journals, Vol. 5 (of 6) • (Lord Byron) George Gordon Byron
... wants his tea and the officers like to carry their canes and swagger sticks with them "over the top" into battle. A brave, unpretending man, who likes his own ways and wishes to be allowed to follow them and who is willing to fight and die that others also may be free—such is the English Tommy. With him it is all a part of the game, the game of war, and the greatest game of all, the game ...
— Winning a Cause - World War Stories • John Gilbert Thompson and Inez Bigwood
... read it with indifference.... Your brief and simple picture of the excellent person, whom I trust you will again meet, cannot be contemplated without the admiration due to her virtues and her pure and unpretending piety. I do not know that I ever met with anything so unostentatiously beautiful. Indisputably, the firm believers in the Gospel have a great advantage over all others—for this simple reason, that if true they will ...
— Byron • John Nichol
... his neat, serviceable undress uniform, with a cigar between his lips. He had abandoned the swagger frogged coat and silk sash for the unpretending patrol jacket of his brethren in the Line. He had been hard at work all day in barracks, inspecting meals, visiting the hospital, attending parades. He had paid his company personally, had seen every ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 99., August 2, 1890. • Various
... fortunate in their leader. Thirty-nine years after his death, lord Brougham wrote of Washington that he was "the greatest man of our own or of any age. * * * This eminent person is presented to our observation clothed in attributes as modest, as unpretending, as little calculated to strike or to astonish, as if he had passed unknown through some secluded region of private life. But he had a judgment sure and sound; a steadiness of mind which never suffered any passion or even any feeling to ruffle its calm; a strength of understanding ...
— An Historical Account of the Settlements of Scotch Highlanders in America • J. P. MacLean
... party, after leaving the Waterport, passed through the Casemate Barrack Square and entered Waterport Street, the chief thoroughfare of the town. It was a narrow, unpretending street, very foreign in aspect; the houses tall and overhanging with balconies filled with flowers; the lattice-shutters gaily painted, having outside blinds of brilliantly ...
— The Thin Red Line; and Blue Blood • Arthur Griffiths
... figures, and of such purity, that especially towards the horizon, it shall be in the highest degree expressive of the infinite space of heaven. I do not mean to say that they did this with any occult or metaphysical motives. They did it, I think, with the child-like, unpretending simplicity of all earnest men; they did what they loved and felt; they sought what the heart naturally seeks, and gave what it most gratefully receives; and I look to them as in all points of principle (not, observe, of knowledge or empirical attainment) as the ...
— Modern Painters Volume II (of V) • John Ruskin
... 9 inches in height, but of compact build, his figure and gait characteristically expressed resolution and strength. His face, although in itself unpretending, was one that in the common phrase 'grew upon you.' Time had not streaked with grey the crisp, curly brown hair of his youth and traced lines of care on his ample forehead and strong clear face, bronzed with exposure ...
— The Life of Gordon, Volume I • Demetrius Charles Boulger
... amidships, by a cask or two; and, knowing that the whole Eight hundred emigrants must come face to face with them, I took my station behind the two. They knew nothing whatever of me, I believe, and my testimony to the unpretending gentleness and good nature with which they discharged their duty, may be of the greater worth. There was not the slightest flavour of the Circumlocution ...
— The Uncommercial Traveller • Charles Dickens
... and was dissatisfied with our life in the city because it seemed dull and monotonous to me. When I look back now and remember how poor a return I gave for the love that was given to me—my mother's anxiety, my father's steady, unpretending kindness—I feel how well I have deserved the sorrows that have ...
— Charlotte's Inheritance • M. E. Braddon
... in the zenith of distinguished dissipations! Courteous, attentive, and animated, the women did not esteem him the less for admiring them rather than himself; while, by the gravity of his demeanour to men,—the eloquent, yet unpretending flow of his conversation, whenever topics of intellectual interest were discussed, the plain and solid sense which he threw into his remarks, and the avidity with which he courted the society of all distinguished for literary or political eminence,—he was silently but ...
— The Disowned, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... in cosy cradles; but all clean, safe, and happy. What needs it to say whether the good ladies who tended them wore the habit of St. Vincent de Paul, the poke-bonnet of the Puseyite "sister," or the simple garb of unpretending Protestantism? The thing is being done. The most helpless of all our population—the children of the working poor—are being kept from the streets, kept from harm, and trained up to habits of decency, at 4, Bulstrode Street, Marylebone Lane. Any one can go and see ...
— Mystic London: - or, Phases of occult life in the metropolis • Charles Maurice Davies
... few inches, and the chair standing on this elevation differed from the others in having arms at the sides, and in being of ampler proportions, as if by its appearance to vindicate a claim to superior position. But unpretending as was the room, it was a place of no little importance, being no less than the Court Hall and Council Chamber of the "Governor and Company of the Massachusetts Bay, in New England." At the moment of which we are speaking, it was appropriated ...
— The Knight of the Golden Melice - A Historical Romance • John Turvill Adams
... high and low degree, in that unpretending little town, both then and long after, were accustomed to enjoy the salt water in a primitive fashion. Neither tents nor bathing machines were thought of. Each matron stood ready with a large sheet, under which ...
— Janet McLaren - The Faithful Nurse • W.H.G. Kingston
... precepts and the dogmatic statements of religion acquire a singular and living force when we perceive them carried out and realised in the actual affairs of life in a degree to which our personal experience is a stranger. Influenced as human nature is by example, these unpretending narratives, whose whole strength lies in the facts which they record, and not in the art of the biographer, undeniably strike the mind with an almost supernatural force. They enchain the attention; they compel us to say, Are these things true? Are these ...
— The Life of St. Frances of Rome, and Others • Georgiana Fullerton
... also found at Blenheim, in Oxfordshire, when it was visited by Dr. Johnson, as may be seen in "Boswell."] As my father always retained a town-house in Manchester (somewhere in Fountain-street), and, though a plain, unpretending man, was literary to the extent of having written a book, all things were so arranged that there was no possibility of any commercial mementos ever penetrating to the rural retreat of his family; such mementos, I mean, ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... had not heard of "the latest fashion," and paid no attention to the cut of his garments, although, it must be confessed, he sometimes wished them a trifle more spruce and comfortable. His home, as I have hinted, was on the prairie. Nevertheless, the family domain was an unpretending one. Less than an acre, fenced in the rudest manner, enclosed the "farm and farm buildings," the latter consisting of a small log house and log pigsty, the cabin, at the time our sketch opens, being, it is evident, at least two seasons old—a fact which serves ...
— The Cabin on the Prairie • C. H. (Charles Henry) Pearson
... their vacation. The weather had been magnificent throughout; Rose's cheeks were more than touched by the sun, greatly to the advantage of her unpretending comeliness. She was a typical English maiden, rather tall, shapely rather than graceful, her head generally bent, her movements always betraying the diffidence of solitary habit. The lips were her finest feature, ...
— The House of Cobwebs and Other Stories • George Gissing
... ourselves with country fare and looking at the strange place from the window of the little inn. Then Richard proposed that we should walk out while waiting for repairs to our vehicle. Together we strolled through the quiet lanes and open commons till we came upon a pretty, unpretending church, half hidden in ivy and creeping vines. The door stood open. "Come," said he, "let us go in." I followed him in. To my surprise I discovered a clergyman in his robes at the altar. Richard whispered in my ear some words which I could not understand ...
— Strange Visitors • Henry J. Horn
... dreamed her childish dreams, and from which she was hastily aroused one June morning to be saluted as Queen. So homelike and livable an air pervades the place, that one almost expects to see the lonely little girl of seventy years ago playing about the unpretending chambers. ...
— Worldly Ways and Byways • Eliot Gregory
... desire no better regale—but what an aching vacuum of matter; I don't stick at the madness of it, for that is only a consequence of shutting his eyes and thinking he is in the age of the old Elisabeth poets; from thence I turned to V. Bourne—what a sweet unpretending pretty-mannered matter-ful creature, sucking from every flower, making a flower of every thing, his diction all Latin and his thoughts all English. Bless him, Latin wasn't good enough for him, why wasn't he content with the language which Gay ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 5 • Edited by E. V. Lucas
... year, furnished him little more than the rudiments of English, and at the age of twenty he closed the door to further advancement by prematurely burdening himself with a family; yet he seemed to know without apparent effort everything that was necessary to know, and to exert a gentle, unconscious, unpretending power that was resistless. A sweetness of temper and a native dignity of manner cast a grace and charm about him which acted as a spell upon all who came within its influence. Hammond, the historian, ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... at the obscure market-town press of Newark, was altogether a very homely, rustic work, and no attempt was made to bespeak for it a good name from the critics. It was truly an innocent affair and an unpretending performance. But notwithstanding these, at least seeming, qualities of young doubtfulness and timidity, they did not soften the austere nature of the bleak and blighting criticism which was then ...
— The Life of Lord Byron • John Galt
... a seat at Florian's marble tables, or a perch in Quadri's window, though the former supply dainty food, and the latter command a bird's-eye view of the Piazza. Rather would I lead them to a certain humble tavern on the Zattere. It is a quaint, low-built, unpretending little place, near a bridge, with a garden hard by which sends a cataract of honeysuckles sunward over a too-jealous wall. In front lies a Mediterranean steamer, which all day long has been discharging cargo. Gazing westward up Giudecca, masts and ...
— New Italian sketches • John Addington Symonds
... a faithful hack, that had evidently suffered long and much in the service of its master. When this duty was discharged, the old man and his unknown guest entered the house together; the frank and unpretending hospitality of a country like that they were in, rendering suspicion or hesitation qualities that were unknown to the reception of a man of white blood; more especially if he spoke the language of the island, which was ...
— The Wept of Wish-Ton-Wish • James Fenimore Cooper
... them to an unpretending iron gateway, which gave entrance to an avenue of fine old trees. The gate stood open, and though a woman ran out from the lodge when the trap ...
— The Guinea Stamp - A Tale of Modern Glasgow • Annie S. Swan
... Coblenz, and past the island of Nonnenwerth, is the old tenth-century castle of Sayn, which stood until the Thirty Years' War, and below it, quiet, comfortable, large, but unpretending, lies the new house of the family of Sayn-Wittgenstein, built in the year 1848. As we push our way down the Rhine we soon come to the little peaceful town of Neuwied, a sanctuary for persecuted Flemings and others of the Low Countries, gathered here ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume V (of X) • Various
... in the matter of purely physical help and companionship, his presence was in no wise an acquisition to them. Hence the little fit of pique, the outcome of which had been a resolve to show these two resourceful men that he, plain, unpretending seamen though he was, knew a thing or two besides how to handle or navigate a ship, and that, even when it came to such a matter as the knocking up of an impromptu house, he was not disposed to give way to anybody. The house, or shelter ...
— The Missing Merchantman • Harry Collingwood
... under thick brows; Mortier, still taller, with a stupid sentinel look; Lefebvre, an old Alsatian camp-boy, with his wife, former washerwoman to the regiment; and Davoust, a little smooth-pated, unpretending man, who was never tired ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... skiffs. The two most magnificent state galleys from Heroopolis were coming here, bearing the ambassadors who, in the King's name, were to receive the fleet and its commander. Other large and small, richly equipped, or unpretending ships and boats ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... before a gray, unpretending post, on which was fastened a sort of wooden plate. The child laughed, and said that this was ...
— Dame Care • Hermann Sudermann
... the depths "the sacred river ran." A few boats and barges sailing up and down, passed under the lovely viaduct; Brittany peasant girls were putting off from the shallow bank with small cargoes of provisions, evidently coming from some market. Under the rugged cliffs ran a long row of small, unpretending houses, level with the river; a paradise sheltered, one would think, from all the winds of heaven: yet even here, no doubt, the east wind finds a passage for its sharp tooth ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 1, January, 1891 • Various
... to say precipitous, but we made it in safety; and so shall you, if you will be agile. New York is a pleasant little Dutch city, on a dot of island a few miles southwest of Massachusetts. For a city entirely unobtrusive and unpretending, it has really great attractions and solid merit; but the superior importance of other places will not permit me to tarry long within its hospitable walls. In fact, we only arrived late at night, and departed early the next morning; but even a six-hours' sojourn gave me a solemn and "realizing ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. July, 1863, No. LXIX. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... later, he knocked timidly one evening at the door of a modest little workman-looking cottage, down a small side street in the back-wastes of Chelsea. 'Twas a most unpretending street; Bower Lane by name, full of brown brick houses, all as like as peas, and with nothing of any sort to redeem their plain fronts from the common blight of the London jerry-builder. Only a soft serge curtain and a pot of mignonette on the ledge of the window, distinguished the ...
— The Woman Who Did • Grant Allen
... sincerity whether she had really sung "assez bien" on Monday night, and broke into a fit of the merriest laughter when she received the answer, "Tres bien pour une petite fille." "Alboni," writes this friend, "is assuredly for a great artist the most unpretending and simple creature in the world. She hasn't the slightest notion of her position in her art in the eyes of ...
— Great Singers, Second Series - Malibran To Titiens • George T. Ferris
... confidence in others, till they are proved to have forfeited it; he should know it by my own words in that very sermon, in which I say it is best to be natural, and that reserve is at best but an unpleasant necessity. I say, "I do not deny that there is something very engaging in a frank and unpretending manner; some persons have it more than others; in some persons it is a great grace. But it must be recollected that I am speaking of times of persecution and oppression to Christians, such as the text foretells; and then surely frankness will ...
— Apologia pro Vita Sua • John Henry Newman
... unpretending memoir may its subject live again, and not in vain. May teachers gather from her example fresh inspiration, and the benevolent Christian fresh impulses in doing good. May they who enjoy advantages superior to those of her proscribed race, take heed lest the latter, by the better ...
— Mary S. Peake - The Colored Teacher at Fortress Monroe • Lewis C. Lockwood
... lap in the March to Finchley, (its careless innocent face placed directly behind the intriguing time-furrowed countenance of the treason-plotting French priest,) perfectly sobers the whole of that tumultuous scene. The boy mourner winding up his top with so much unpretending insensibility in the plate of the Harlot's Funeral, (the only thing in that assembly that is not a hypocrite,) quiets and soothes the mind that has been disturbed at the sight of so much ...
— The Works of Charles Lamb in Four Volumes, Volume 4 • Charles Lamb
... hair, her father often said, resembled the fire at the top of Shadrach. Howat knew that she was as impersonal, as essentially unstirred, as himself; but he had a clear doubt of Mrs. Gilkan. The latter was too anxious to welcome him to their unpretending home; she obviously moved to throw Fanny and himself together, and to disparage such suits as honest Dan Hesa's. He wondered if the older woman thought he might marry her daughter. And wondering he came to the conclusion that the other thing would please the mother almost as ...
— The Three Black Pennys - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer
... side of Shaftesbury Avenue, and parallel with it, is Gerrard Street, a dingy, unpretending place, but thick with memories and associations. It was built about 1681, and was called after Gerard, Earl of Macclesfield. Wheatley quotes from the Bagford MSS. of the British Museum to the effect that "Henry, Prince of Wales, son of James I., caused a piece of ground near Leicester ...
— The Strand District - The Fascination of London • Sir Walter Besant
... working out of my original plan, I have added more questions and answers in the text of each new English edition of the Catechism, leaving it to its translators to render them into whichever of the other vernaculars they may be working in. The unpretending aim in view is to give so succinct and yet comprehensive a digest of Buddhistic history, ethics and philosophy as to enable beginners to understand and appreciate the noble ideal taught by the Buddha, and thus make it easier for them to follow out the ...
— The Buddhist Catechism • Henry S. Olcott
... out of temper, seized by that sudden disgust with life in general which is often the result of the departure of one person who has given it a special interest. It was a strong effect to be produced by Chatty's unpretending personality, but it affected him more than if she had been in herself a more striking personage. For it was not so much that her presence made a blank in any of the gay scenes that still remained, but that she suggested another ...
— A Country Gentleman and his Family • Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant
... beautiful eyes, and gray hair, nearly white indeed, combed smoothly away from her forehead. We talked freely together, avoiding the shop, and the impression she left on my mind was that of a modest, unpretending gentlewoman, full of quiet strength and shrewd pleasantry, with a Scottish flavor, but altogether above being brilliant or showy, even in conversation with a stranger and an author. She questioned me closely about my country and about ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 106, August, 1866 • Various
... garden-like air of universal cultivation! What beautiful smooth slopes! What green, quiet meadows! What rich round trees, brooding over their silent shadows! What exquisite dark nooks and romantic lanes! What an aspect of unpretending happiness in the clean cottages, with their little trim gardens! What tranquil grandeur and rural luxury in the noble mansions and glorious parks of the British aristocracy! How the love of nature ...
— Flowers and Flower-Gardens • David Lester Richardson
... a few years—passed in the useful and unpretending occupations of the husbandman—brought no external change to Daniel Boone, deserving of record. His step was now the firm tread of sober manhood; and his purpose the result of matured reflection. This influence ...
— The First White Man of the West • Timothy Flint
... printers quarrelled about the MSS., and, as the writer understood, the entire concern broke up in a row in consequence. And, in fact, when we reflect on the amount of fierce attack and recrimination we reflect this unpretending and peaceful little volume elicited after the appearance of the fifth English edition, and the injury which it sustained from garbled and falsified editions, in not less than three unauthorised reprints, it would really seem as if this first edition, which "died a borning," ...
— The Breitmann Ballads • Charles G. Leland
... Jefferson was the principal object of regard both to the members and spectators; that he seemed to be the chief mover of the body—the soul that animated it; and some who were present, struck by their manifestations of deference, conceived a more exalted idea of him on this simple and unpretending occasion than they had ever ...
— Thomas Jefferson • Edward S. Ellis et. al.
... doubtless duly appreciated by him, he having just arrived from Turin. We found him waiting for us, and he accompanied us to the President's residence, called the White House. It is a handsome but unpretending building, not like its neighbours, of marble, but painted to look like stone; the public reception-rooms are alone shown, but a good-natured servant let us see the private rooms, and took us out on a sort of terrace behind, where ...
— First Impressions of the New World - On Two Travellers from the Old in the Autumn of 1858 • Isabella Strange Trotter
... so, and it was the close of the second act before he returned. With him was a small, quiet gentleman, of unpretending appearance, ...
— The Errand Boy • Horatio Alger
... for some facts of which he has been able to make use. Some anachronisms may be noted. Wherever they occur, they have been admitted, as aiding in the development of the story, and will probably be considered as of little importance in an unpretending volume, which does not aspire ...
— Ragged Dick - Or, Street Life in New York with the Boot-Blacks • Horatio Alger
... cared to inquire. His love-songs, however, are exquisitely touching, and among the purest compositions in the language. Certain it is that the poetical power was early manifested; for we find that, in 1836, he gave his first poems to the public. The unpretending volume attracted the attention of John Black, who was then the distinguished editor of the Morning Chronicle. Ever ready to recognise genius wherever it could be found, and always prepared to lend a hand to lift into light the unobtrusive author who laboured ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume VI - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... earthly home unsullied and unknown. No longer a child of the dust, thou steppest forth almost too delicately attired at such a season as this. Ye winds of heaven: "breathe on it gently." Ye showers descend on my Snowdrop with the tenderness of dew. Little flower, I love thy look of unpretending innocence: thou art the child of simplicity. Thou art a flower, even though colourless. Wert thou never gay as others? Where are the hues thou once didst wear? Hast thou lent them to the rainbow, or to gay and gaudy flowers, or why so pale? ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. - Volume 19, No. 536, Saturday, March 3, 1832. • Various
... fancied she could hear the voice of Ethiopian troops hailing the Regent as king—could see Ani decorated with the crown of Upper and Lower Egypt, seated on Rameses' throne, and herself by his side in rich though unpretending splendor. She pictured herself with her son and daughter as enjoying Mena's estate, freed from debt and increased by Ani's generosity, and then a new, intoxicating hope came into her mind. Perhaps already at this moment her daughter was a widow, and why should she not be so fortunate as ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... re-embarked in the afternoon, Mr. Bartlett came with the English consul, who wished, he said, to make the acquaintance of a lady possessing sufficient courage to undertake so long and perilous a journey by herself. His astonishment increased when he was informed that I was an unpretending native of Vienna. The consul was kind enough to offer me the use of his house if I returned by way of Cyprus; he also inquired if he could give me some letters of recommendation to the Syrian consuls. I was touched by this hearty politeness ...
— A Visit to the Holy Land • Ida Pfeiffer
... carriage. It costs you no more than a few illustrated papers, and is more handy to bestow when you have read it. As for the contents, they are eight slight stories, in Mrs. Clifford's best manner. Yet, simple and unpretending as they are, they contain the real novelist's touch. There is nature, drama, character, in these short histories, and, above all, that command of simple pathos which Mrs. Clifford has more than most writers. We do not ...
— A Dozen Ways Of Love • Lily Dougall
... great charlatan of France! Yes, gentlemen, I am a charlatan—a mountebank; it is my profession, not from choice, but from necessity. You, gentlemen, created that necessity! You would not patronize true, unpretending, honest merit, but you are attracted by my glittering casque, my sweeping crest, my waving plumes. You are captivated by din and glitter, and therein lies my strength. Years ago, I hired a modest shop in the Rue Rivoli, ...
— The Humbugs of the World • P. T. Barnum
... writing letters,—letters that Carr Vipont had entreated her to write,—correspondence useful to the House of Vipont. Before long, however, a servant entered, to say that Lady Montfort would be very happy to see Mr. Morley. George followed the servant into that unpretending sitting-room, with its simple chintzes and quiet bookshelves,—room that would not have been too fine for ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... lodgment in the mind. It is like the red "chigoe" which inserts his tiny head in the flesh and burrows until he causes a throbbing fester. For instance, I have never forgotten a speech which was addressed to me over twenty years ago. It was just after we had built an unpretending, but thoroughly cozy summer cottage, nestled in a grove of trees that threw long shadows into a silvery lake. The man in question told me he never saw our light at night from the other side of the pretty sheet of water that it did not "remind him of ...
— The Secret of a Happy Home (1896) • Marion Harland
... generally bestows upon men whose position in society is marked and permanent, and who never can by any possibility compete with him; to these, if they be safe—that is, if they keep quiet, and are content to enjoy a sort of unpretending familiarity, without boasting or pluming themselves upon their position, he does the kindest and most liberal things, in the kindest and most liberal way; in a way that no other man than one truly fashionable can accomplish. He confers benefits with an ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various
... the sea, at the same time commending his soul to God. In a luminous cloud in the dim distance a wave deposited the bottle at the feet of his betrothed. The whole picture was upon an enlarged representation of a lottery ticket bearing the number 9672 in bold relief. An unpretending conception, unquestionably, but one that could hardly fail to be regarded as a masterpiece in the land which still clings to legends of the Undines and Valkyries. Then the story was republished and commented upon in France and England, and even in the United States. The story ...
— Ticket No. "9672" • Jules Verne
... been rather minute in drawing the pictures of these two families, because I considered them specimens of what is often to be met with in this country—the unpretending great, and the arrogant little. I have no respect for titled rank, unless it be accompanied with true nobility of soul; but I have remarked, in all countries where artificial distinctions exist, that the very highest classes are always the most courteous and unassuming. Those who are well assured ...
— The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. • Washington Irving
... a very tidy little modern carriage bustled up the road, a brougham made for a pair of horses which was well known to all hunting men in these parts. It was very unpretending in its colour and harness; but no vehicle more appropriate to its purpose ever carried two thorough-going sportsmen day after day about the country. In this as it pulled up under the head tree of the avenue were seated the two Miss Tristrams. The two Miss Tristrams were well known to ...
— Orley Farm • Anthony Trollope
... repugnant to success. Modesty has ever been the special attribute of the Company of St. Sulpice; this is why it has never attached any importance to literature, excluding it almost entirely. The rule of the St. Sulpice Company is to publish everything anonymously, and to write in the most unpretending and retiring style possible. They see clearly the vanity, and the drawbacks of talent, and they will have none of it. The word which best characterises them is mediocrity, but then their mediocrity is systematic ...
— Recollections of My Youth • Ernest Renan
... indescribable as human features, with a certain boyish awkwardness of manner, but with the most urban-like courtesy and affability. From noon till dark, the time is spent in conversation, continued, various, and eloquent. What a presence is there in this humble, unpretending cottage! And as the stream of Olympian sweetness moves on, now in laughing ripples, and again in a solemn majestic flood, what a past do we bring before ourselves! what a present! For this is he that talked with Coleridge, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. September, 1863, No. LXXI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... reply, and one look of unfathomable reproach from her soft eyes, she turned her back on him; but, remembering her manners, courtesied at the door; and so retired; and unpretending Virtue lent her such true dignity that he was struck dumb, and made no attempt ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 104, June, 1866 • Various
... of as a quiet, unpretending person—occupied with domestic duties, who hated society and never went anywhere—in fact, no one ever heard her name mentioned. A great many people didn't know that Grevy had a wife. When her husband became President of the Republic, there was much discussion ...
— My First Years As A Frenchwoman, 1876-1879 • Mary King Waddington
... been destined for the church, and he was pursuing a layman's course of study at the college of Navarre, under the name of the Marquis de Chillon, when his elder brother, Alphonse Louis du Plessis de Richelieu, became disgusted yith ecclesiastical life, turned Carthusian, and resigned the unpretending bishopric of Lucon in favor of his brother Armand, whom Henry IV. nominated to it in 1605, instructing Cardinal du Perron, at that time his charge d'affaires at Rome, to recommend to Pope Paul V. that election which he had very much at heart. The ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume V. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... of intellectual power; the Queen's face was of Grecian shape, and had a thoughtful and intelligent expression. The face and features were good in form, but the complexion was highly coloured, and looked as though affected by some kind of inflammation. They were a quiet, unpretending, well-meaning, and moral couple. They purified the tainted precincts of the Court, and thus rendered it fit for the abode of the youthful and gracious lady who ...
— Personal Recollections of Birmingham and Birmingham Men • E. Edwards
... become one of fatigue and excitement. Rumors of your advance escape before you, and a happy and grateful community rise up in their clustering cities, towns, and villages, impede your way with demonstrations of respect and kindness, and convert your unpretending journey into a triumphal progress. Such honors frequently attend public functionaries, and such an one may sometimes find it difficult to determine how much of the homage he receives is paid to his own worth, how much proceeds from the ...
— Life and Public Services of John Quincy Adams - Sixth President of the Unied States • William H. Seward
... writer and master of expression. "He was two distinct men," wrote Elwin to John Murray the elder, in 1876, "and the one man quite dissimilar from the other. To see him in company I should not have recognised him for the friend with whom I was intimate in private. Then he was quiet, natural, unpretending, and most agreeable, and in the warmth and generosity of his friendship he had no superior. Sensitive as he was in some ways, there was no man to whom it was easier so speak with perfect frankness. He always bore it ...
— John Forster • Percy Hethrington Fitzgerald
... sorrow and a wounded spirit, there was peace on the brow and in the heart of that despised and neglected one. For he had discovered that, in his visits to his aunt, Amos had found the pearl of great price, and the old man's heart leapt for joy, for he himself was a true though unpretending follower ...
— Amos Huntingdon • T.P. Wilson
... throw from that twilight camp, on the south side of Market Street, stood old St. Patrick's Church. It was a most unpretending structure, and was quite overshadowed by the R.C. Orphan Asylum close at hand. Both were backed by sandhills; and both, together with the sand, have been spirited away. The Palace and Grand Hotels now stand on the ...
— In the Footprints of the Padres • Charles Warren Stoddard
... or some little viscomte, his forced residence in Paraguay would have been of shorter duration. An army would have been despatched to "extradite" him. But Aime Bonpland was only a student of Nature—one of those unpretending men who give the world all the knowledge it has, worth having—and so was he left to languish in captivity. True, his imprisonment was not a very harsh one, and rather partook of the character of parole d'honneur. Francia was aware of his ...
— Gaspar the Gaucho - A Story of the Gran Chaco • Mayne Reid
... a large portion of this work while all its sheets were not yet through the press, and were enabled with some confidence to predict that it would create no small sensation in the literary world. Mr. MAYER has a free, unpretending style, which renders all that he writes eminently readable; a merit in which many far more practised writers are as signally deficient. The programme furnished in the announcement of the work has been well filled up. Many of the ruins and antiquities here described ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, January 1844 - Volume 23, Number 1 • Various
... Earl of Dartmouth (1672-1750), was St. John's fellow Secretary of State. Lord Dartmouth seems to have been a plain, unpretending man, whose ignorance of French helped to throw important matters ...
— The Journal to Stella • Jonathan Swift
... sipped their wine, a liquor of unpretending vintage, moderately enjoyed. Mr. Malone, indeed, would much rather have had whisky; but Mr. Donne, being an Englishman, did not keep the beverage. While they sipped they argued, not on politics, nor on philosophy, nor on literature—these topics were now, as ever, totally ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... was his unabashed affirmative. "Nice, comfortable, elevating palliness with you; and a right down rollicking bust-up occasionally with the ladies of the unpretending school of wild oats." ...
— Winding Paths • Gertrude Page
... us snugly ensconced at Mr. Lines'. Glen-Ridge is the euphonious title he has given to his pretty but unpretending place. Jennie had written among others to Sophie Wheaton, ne Sophie Nichols, an old school-fellow, and Sophie had sent down an invitation to her to come and spend a week and look for herself, and she had done so; save that two days had sufficed instead ...
— Laicus - The experiences of a Layman in a Country Parish • Lyman Abbott
... a walk in Pere Jerome's little garden, of which we have not spoken, off on the right side of the cottage, with his chamber window at one end, a few old and twisted, but blossom-laden, crape-myrtles on either hand, now and then a rose of some unpretending variety and some bunches of rue, and at the other end a shrine, in whose blue niche stood a small figure of Mary, with folded hands and uplifted eyes. No other window looked down upon the spot, and its seclusion was often a ...
— Old Creole Days • George Washington Cable
... fairness of mind, a single-hearted devotion to truth, and a disposition of rare kindness and disinterested humanity. His biography will be read with satisfaction, by those who feel themselves indebted to his writings. It is simple, honest, unpretending, like its subject. With the singularly prosaic mind of Mr. George Combe, no one can expect to find it animated with any living glow. It records the life of a public benefactor, but with as little freshness or enthusiasm, as if the author were giving a Phrenological lecture on a collection ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 3, August, 1850. • Various
... by their means of obtaining them, those means will be increased to infinity. This is true in all the parts of administration, as well as in the whole. If any individual were to decline his appointments, it might give an unfair advantage to ostentatious ambition over unpretending service; it might breed invidious comparisons; it might tend to destroy whatever little unity and agreement may be found among ministers. And, after all, when an ambitious man had run down his competitors by a fallacious ...
— Selections from the Speeches and Writings of Edmund Burke. • Edmund Burke
... Roden lived at No. 11, and Mrs. Demijohn lived at No. 10, the house opposite. There had already been some discussion in Holloway about Lord Hampstead, but nothing had as yet been discovered. He might have been at the house on various previous occasions, but had come in so unpretending a manner as hardly to have done more than to cause himself to be regarded as a stranger in Holloway. He was known to be George's friend, because he had been first seen coming with George on a Saturday ...
— Marion Fay • Anthony Trollope
... the last page of a work, which though its form be light and unpretending, would yet aspire to suggest to its readers some considerations of a very opposite character. A year ago. I presumed to offer to the public some volumes that aimed to call their attention to the state of our political parties; their origin, their history, ...
— Sybil - or the Two Nations • Benjamin Disraeli
... each street has its peculiar feature. Such a street is sacred to commerce—a private residence in it would appear out of place. Such another is devoted to unpretending dwellings: the modest grocery shop of the corner looks conscious of being there on sufferance only. Here resides the well-to-do—the successful merchant; further, much further on, dwell the lowly—the poor. Between both points ...
— Picturesque Quebec • James MacPherson Le Moine
... daughter of Lady Lawe, looked suddenly broad, heavy and inanimate; and how Miss Arrowpoint, unfortunately also dressed in white, immediately resembled a carte-de-visite in which one would fancy the skirt alone to have been charged for. Since Miss Arrowpoint was generally liked for the amiable unpretending way in which she wore her fortunes, and made a softening screen for the oddities of her mother, there seemed to be some unfitness in Gwendolen's looking so much more like a person ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... daytime, as I now see it for the first time, Port Louis is indeed a crowded and busy place, and its low-pitched warehouses and unpretending-looking buildings hold many and many thousand tons of miscellaneous merchandise coming in or going out. But at sunset an exodus of all the white and most of the creole inhabitants sets in, leaving the dusty streets and dingy buildings to watchmen ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. October, 1878. • Various
... the betrothed of Alette. During his absence, Alette was to pay a visit to her uncle in Hallingdal; but, according to Mrs. Astrid's wish, she yet spent another week at Semb. During these days, Alette and Susanna became better friends, for Alette was touched involuntarily by Susanna's unwearied and unpretending attentions, and besides this, she found in her such a frank mind and such cordial sympathy, that she could not deny herself the pleasure of communicating much of that which lived in the heart of the happy bride. Happy,—indeed Alette was, for long and warmly had she loved Alf Lexow, ...
— Strife and Peace • Fredrika Bremer
... Men," Gorki's sinister experience and pathos are essential factors in the accusing symbolism. He relates in the unpretending style of a chronicler how the corpulent citizens reside on the hill-tops, amid well-tended gardens. When it rains the whole refuse of the upper ...
— Maxim Gorki • Hans Ostwald
... mind. Like most of our successful men, he began the world with no capital beside brains; and like Daniel Webster and Louis Philippe, his early employment was teaching. The instructor, however, was soon merged in the business man, and in 1827 his unpretending name was displayed in Broadway, The little concern in which he then was salesman, buyer, financier, and sole manager, has gradually increased in importance, until it has become the present marble palace. It is probable ...
— The Continental Monthly , Vol. 2 No. 5, November 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... is served in this unpretending little book, ... which contains an amount and kind of information that it would be difficult to find elsewhere without great labor. The author's subject is the Ghetto, or Jewish quarter in ...
— Jewish Literature and Other Essays • Gustav Karpeles
... small place in the neighbourhood of Aix-la-Chapelle; a quiet, unpretending place, where there are ever-rising springs of boiling, sulphuric water. The precise course of treatment I will come in another day and describe to you. I had to drink a great deal of the water, warm—six or eight half-pints of it a day; I had to bathe regularly ...
— The Channings • Mrs. Henry Wood
... occupation was to study Silvia, who then enjoyed the greatest reputation, and I judged her to be even above it. She was then about fifty years old, her figure was elegant, her air noble, her manners graceful and easy; she was affable, witty, kind to everybody, simple and unpretending. Her face was an enigma, for it inspired everyone with the warmest sympathy, and yet if you examined it attentively there was not one beautiful feature; she could not be called handsome, but no one could have thought her ugly. ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... turning in the carriage towards his companion, "weak creature as I am, so unpretending in genius, so low in the scale of intelligent beings, it has never yet happened to me to converse with a man without penetrating his thoughts through that living mask which has been thrown over our mind, in order to retain its expression. ...
— The Man in the Iron Mask • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... distressed, "what is the meaning of all this? What is intended by a language so foreign to the homeliness of the shepherd's cot, and the admirable simplicity of pastoral life? I know not what title I have, a poor, unpretending virgin, to the respects of this lord; but surely if they meaned me well, they would be less hollow and absurd. Would there not be much more respect, much more civility, in permitting me to follow my own inclinations, without ...
— Imogen - A Pastoral Romance • William Godwin
... you know the story?" said Miss Debby, in her turn looking surprised; "they met last summer at the Springs, and the colonel was so pleased with her unpretending good sense, excellent principles, and superior mental cultivation, that he proposed to her before she went away. She deferred her answer until she and his children should have become acquainted. You know he is a widower with three daughters—two of them married. ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various
... that will protect that flower will also guard and protect the hand that planted it." He knew that I had drank deep of the cup of slavery, was aware of what I meant, and merely nodded his head in reply. I never experienced hospitality more genuine, and yet more unpretending, than was meted out to me while at Hartwell. And the favourable impression made on my own mind, of the distinguished proprietor of Hartwell Park, was nearly as indelible as my humble name that the Doctor had engraven in a brick, in the vault beneath ...
— Three Years in Europe - Places I Have Seen and People I Have Met • William Wells Brown
... truth must be told. It was well observed by Sir James Mackintosh, whose knowledge of these times was unequalled, that Addison never, in any official document, affected wit or eloquence, and that his despatches are, without exception, remarkable for unpretending simplicity. Everybody who knows with what ease Addison's finest essays were produced must be convinced that, if well-turned phrases had been wanted, he would have had no difficulty in finding them. We are, however, ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... sister,—the sister to whom he was so fervently attached. The father was a plain, homely man,—nothing more, and assuming to be nothing more, than a Dublin tradesman.[F] The mother evidently possessed a far higher mind. She, too, was retiring and unpretending,—like her son in features,—with the same gentle, yet sparkling eye, flexible and smiling mouth, and kindly and conciliating manners. It was to be learned long afterwards how deep was the affection that existed in the poet's heart for these humble relatives,—how ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 87, January, 1865 • Various
... her eccentric 'Gamaliel.' Miss Emma Roberts was one of the favored ladies, and Miss Spence (who, like all 'Leo-hunters,' delighted in novelty) had just caught the author of 'The Mummy,' Jane Webb, who was as gentle and unpretending then as she was in after-years, when, laying aside romance for reality, she became a great helper of her husband, Mr. London, in his laborious and valuable works. When I heard Miss Benger was there, in her historic turban, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 89, March, 1865 • Various
... disappeared behind the western mountains, and the stars sparkled o'er the blue concave, we have been accustomed to sit down to the compilation of this unpretending volume, and therefore it is called "Eventide." O, that its pages might be read at that calm, silent hour,—their follies mercifully overlooked, ...
— Eventide - A Series of Tales and Poems • Effie Afton
... street, and when her chamber was reached, and Louis, to whom she told her story, whispered in her ear, "I am glad that is so," she thought it very nice to be engaged, and was conscious of a happier, more independent feeling than she had ever known before. It seemed so strange that she, an unpretending country girl, had won the heart that many a city maiden had tried in vain to win, and then with a pang she thought of Nellie, wondering what excuse she could render her for having stolen ...
— Cousin Maude • Mary J. Holmes
... In these quiet, unpretending stories the writer has attempted to give a faithful picture of life among the Indians and Spaniards in Nueva California during the early days ...
— Old Mission Stories of California • Charles Franklin Carter
... unpretending offering my aim has been, as far as was compatible with a personal history, to make my pages interesting to the general public, but I cannot close without addressing some especial words to those, who, like myself, must be content to live with vision veiled from the world's transcendant ...
— The World As I Have Found It - Sequel to Incidents in the Life of a Blind Girl • Mary L. Day Arms
... there was nothing he didn't seem to know, nothing he couldn't do. Every day he was in the saddle, reconnoitering, visiting the heads of the tribes, making peace, distributing justice. Every day he went out with his life in his hands, and every night he came back, quiet, unpretending, never boasting, never complaining, and yet we knew that somewhere he had risked himself to clear a stone out of our way, to win an enemy over to our side, to confirm a friend in his friendship. Yes, he ...
— The Native Born - or, The Rajah's People • I. A. R. Wylie
... the year 1828, and soon became acquainted, through some of my brother entomologists,[3] with Professor Henslow, for all who cared for any branch of natural history were equally encouraged by him. Nothing could be more simple, cordial, and unpretending than the encouragement which he afforded to all young naturalists. I soon became intimate with him, for he had a remarkable power of making the young feel completely at ease with him; though we were all awe-struck with the amount of his knowledge. Before I saw ...
— Life of Charles Darwin • G. T. (George Thomas) Bettany
... Robert,' 'avocat;' and the other, that he is 'Mr. C. Robert,' 'attorney at law.' In the 'Cote des Neiges,' behind the mountain, at Montreal, and in the suburb or quarter 'St. Henry,' this French appearance is universal. 'Notre Dame des Neiges,' in the former, with its gaudily painted inside and unpretending outside, its wooden roof and tin-covered steeple, would recall to you the wooded districts of France; and the houses in both quarters, the people with their 'bonnets rouges' (as distinguished from the 'bonnets bleus' and 'bonnets gris' of the ...
— Canada and the States • Edward William Watkin
... till sun go down; den I go home. I wish I could speak English better; but you understand me, sir." We rowed off with many vivas, and this poor mason's "hopes" that we "might find all square at home." At home! Oh, that we had a home!!—an unassuming wife—placens et tacens uxor; an unpretending house, with a comfortable guest-chamber; and no noiseless nursery, unfendered and uncared for! But the bells of Messina, all let loose together, interrupt our pleasing reverie, and our friends, who have been hovering round us in a ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 363, January, 1846 • Various
... little work ten times its present length, we should have read it to the end with the same interest which its perusal inspired, and arrived, with the same regret that there was not more of it, at its last page. It is simple and unpretending, but as life-like and spirited as any collection of descriptive sketches which we can recall. We realize in it all the vexations of mud, all the horrors of blood, and all the joys of occasional chickens and a good night's rest, which render the soldier's ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No IV, April 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... It was a small, unpretending village, composed entirely of frame houses, of modest size, and a few small stores kept, as the signs indicated, by Frenchmen. On a little elevation stood a wooden Catholic church, surmounted ...
— The Erie Train Boy • Horatio Alger |
